How much abuse will IMDB let a user get away with because they have a Pro Account.

Apologies for this long story, but I think it gone on long enough and IMDB are literally doing nothing about the problem. I’m using peoples names, because IMDB are doing nothing and I feel I need to highlight these clowns.

So, I’m in a unique position, I run a shopping centre and I run a film festival. Almost two years ago I was approached for permission to film in the centre, the guys were new to business and I thought I’ll help them out by giving them some free use. I also highlighted that they should submit the film to the festival. All was pretty amicable.

The filmmakers submitted their film, a movie called Mothers Child, and unfortunately, we could not show it, it was pretty awful and as someone has made some awful films myself, trust me when I say this was bad.  The two “filmmakers”  Swaylee Lougnane and Lee Westwick realising that we were not going to show the film started a campaign of saying the film either was showing or had shown at the festival, they also claim the film showed at Cannes and Lift Off Sessions, it never, its worth bearing in mind this film includes over 23 minutes of stock footage obtained from Shutterstock or the like which would disqualify it from most festivals especially Cannes given that this is a narrative storyline.

First of all we corrected people when they asked why the film didn’t show, one excuse was that apparently our festival didn’t allow nudity, then it was because our festival wasn’t good enough. This is fine, but then we noticed they started stating conflicting data on IMDB that it showed at the festival, and received a standing ovation, that it showed at the festival and won, that it never showed at the festival because the film was better than the festival. I continuously removed these comments from imdb, because they were false and besides I have the integrity of the festival to consider. They removed the winners of films and replaced the winners links with theres.  Now bear in mind this has been going on for 8 months now, them adding and me removing. I even spoke to them and they promised not to do it again, only to do it again days, hours or sometimes even minutes later. They began degrading members of the festival team including myself.

I have a small film catalogue, two films one called Death Walks the other called No Reasons they then started attacking the two films, writing or egging people on to write fake reviews and scoring the film with one star. Without even being subtle about it, the same reviewers are giving these filmmakers 10-star reviews and mine 1. They have started vandalising the various IMDB pages. Look at the last two reviews on Death Walks by Danny Toye (who is in two of their films) and MaximumPayne123.

But here is where it gets interesting, when they post a fake comment and I remove it, IMDB have supplied them with my contact details. When actually, I know a lot of people having to remove fake comments including a couple of big festivals. All of whom have tried to get poster art removed for the film which states it showed their festivals. I also became aware of an actor by the name of Clarke Tribe who had a considerable ongoing issue which he reported to IMDB and they did nothing, look at the IMDB pages for Poking Flipper and Plastic Gangsters, they are literally destroying him and his reputation.

My question to IMDB is if you are getting complaints on these guys, I have today seen other mention of them on these very forums, why are you allowing them to continue? Why are you allowing them to right fake reviews on their own films? When they are so unsubtle, they are using their own names as user names.

Surely just because someone has a pro account, are imdb so desperate for money that they are going to allow these people to continuously vandalise the films and reputations of others?

I’d like to add I have dozens of screen grabs of their handy work, including time and date. IMDB only need to look at the sudden recent downrates on Death Walks and No Reasons to know this is true, especially given that Death Walks has been out their in the world for five years.